I've been pondering the imperial damage mitigation issue in my head. For a faction that should live and die by it's variance, they really don't worry about variance with cards like Autothrusters and Palpatine. It's created a bit of a monster.

I wonder if the monster would still exist if both cards were reworded slightly?

Autothrusters reads:

"When defending, if you are inside the attacker's firing arc beyond Range 2 or outside the attackers firing arc, you may change 1 of your blank results to an evade result. You can equip this card only if you have the Boost action icon."

What if instead it read:

"When defending, if you are inside the attacker's firing arc beyond Range 2 or outside the attackers firing arc, and if you rolled an evade result , you may change 1 of your blank results to an evade result. You can equip this card only if you have the Boost action icon."

Autothrusters is still a power card. But, if you roll 0 evades it can no longer save you. It would have given low hull arc dodgers game against turrets, but it would have also kept them susceptible to variance. And it gives 2 attack ships a fighting chance against AT aces with the evade action. I think this version of the card would have been an excellent balance.

What if we did something similar to Palpatine:

Original Palpatine:

"Once per round, you may change a friendly ship's die result to any other die result. That die result cannot be modified again."

What if Palpatine read:

"Once per round, you may change a friendly ship's die result to any die result rolled on that roll . That die result cannot be modified again."

Similar effect here. Basically, Palpatine can't create something out of nothing, but he can have a strong multiplicative effect. As long as you had rolled an evade, you can change any of the other die to an evade. As long as you rolled a Hit/Crit, you can change another die to that same face.

I think I would have preferred the Autothruster change. I think the Palp change may be a bit too much. It would ruin Palp's ability to save you from rocks and damage crits, or any other single die roll event, and that card should be able to do that.

I do think Autothrusters worded the alternate way would have been better. Everyone would still take it for 2 points, and it would still be ridiculously undercosted. It would still be an absolute autoinclude on any ship with boost. And it would still be a very powerful card that would work almost all the time. But, it wouldn't save high agility ships from the variance boogie man. And, high agility ships should be scared of the variance boogie man.

This is of course moot. FFG doesn't change cards, so AT is the way that it is and that's that. But, I had been pondering those variations tonight and I was curious to know what people thought of them. I'm not attempting to get FFG to change anything, I'm simply wondering out loud.

That would be interesting, but not enough. You're still pretty much invincible.

It would be worse actually, there would just be the illusion that Palp Aces was fixed so nothing would actually get done about it. "See, Palp Aces isn't broken, I got extremely lucky and hit Soontir range 3 through his stealth device and an obstruction! It doesn't ruin the game, stop using hyperbole."

I wouldn't be so concerned about ruining the Palpatine card. If that single card was made epic only, you would free up a ton more upgrades and pilots and ships. Nerf that card into the ******* ground, game would be much better without it. Or at least an in-arc requirement or something.

But, you could no longer roll all blanks and range 3 and take no damage. I think it's ok for these cards to do strong things. But, it's bad when they can save ships from total blank outs. Ships should be taking damage when they blank their rolls.

Clearly, the designers wanted to improve low HP high AGI ships against turrets when they release Autothrusters. I get why, and maybe it was needed. But, arc dodgers should be scared of turreted ships. Two Gold Squadrons with Ion Turrets should scare Soontir, but with Autothrusters Soontir is nearly immune to their shots. Those arc dodgers counter generic jousters so hard that they need their own relatively hard counter. Traditionally, the hard counter to arc dodgers was a turret, but post Autothrusters, turrets are almost useless against AT ships.

I think ideally, I would have liked to see the designers have kept variance as a problem for high agility ships. The two alternate reality cards I mentioned above would have created strong defensive tools for high agility ships, but it would have kept variance in play as a reasonable weakness.

I remember there once was a lot of talk about the "three design pillars" where you had Jousters, Arc Dodgers, and Turret ships. I liked this structure, as there tended to be an inherent rock-paper-scissor mechanic to ship design. I feel like somewhere along the way, the actual designs of newer things ended up mitigating this, and a lot of things got sort of left behind in the attempt.

I like that turrets used to counter arc dodgers, I like that arc dodgers used to counter jousters, and that jousters would usually counter turret ships. Now it just feels like if you aren't arc dodging, you aren't winning. Arc dodgers became a direct counter to both jousters /and/ turret ships, and whether or not you like pwts, having one style of ship trumping all others is just not really an ideal situation.

I do like a sort of returning to focus of getting ships in arc, and auxilliary arcs, but I do think there need to be some more cut-through abilities, as especially in the case of palp ace soontir, there's just too much sheer defensive ability for a lot of things to do much about.

Jousters NEVER countered turrets, that whole 3 pillar idea was flawed from the get go.

Jousters NEVER countered turrets, that whole 3 pillar idea was flawed from the get go.

Well, the pretense at least felt like they were going for something like that, even if it didn't work from the start. I pretty much started the game just after fat han stopped being king of the hill, so it's kind of always felt to me that anything but arc dodgers was getting the shaft pretty hard.

Wasn't it about this time last year when everyone was complaining that nothing could stand up to turrets?

Jousters NEVER countered turrets, that whole 3 pillar idea was flawed from the get go.

Yes they did. During waves w2-3 jousters would outfly the falcon and just murder him in basically 2 rounds. It wasn't until c3po and predator that things changed. Predator allowed Han to no longer care about his action for damage, freeing him to boost and arc dodge the jousters. And c3po allowed him to be more durable against the jouster he couldn't get out of arc of. So the turret became an arc dodger and therefore was able to beat jousters.

That would be conditionalthrusters, not autothrusters.

I remember there once was a lot of talk about the "three design pillars" where you had Jousters, Arc Dodgers, and Turret ships...

The 3 pillars was sort of a fallacy as the best turrets were the ones that could arc dodge as well (Han/Deci/Dash with Boost).

The true three pillars (at least in the current meta) are: JOUSTERS, ACE, CONTROL.

Control pieces like blocking, stress, automatic damage, and token denial is what beats arc dodgers.

Control pieces have existed since the ion cannon turret, and though I think it has its place in X Wing, it is hard to master and only helps against aces, as your damage output won't be high enough to deal with swarmy lists. Having a limited amount of points dedicated to Anti-Ace tech is usually enough to give you a chance across the board (like U-Boat lists with feedback array).

Jousters NEVER countered turrets, that whole 3 pillar idea was flawed from the get go.

Yes they did. During waves w2-3 jousters would outfly the falcon and just murder him in basically 2 rounds. It wasn't until c3po and predator that things changed. Predator allowed Han to no longer care about his action for damage, freeing him to boost and arc dodge the jousters. And c3po allowed him to be more durable against the jouster he couldn't get out of arc of. So the turret became an arc dodger and therefore was able to beat jousters.

I guess my meta was just more advanced then. Falcons had EU day one and Han always took that boost action. Like you said, all turrets could arc dodge the jousters, but that's been the way since their release. People just took longer in some areas to realize the power EU had.

Don't propose fixes to the Palp card that don't include it's complete and total elimination from 100 pt play. Otherwise you are just begging for a long, pointless argument from PGS.

Any substantial nerf to Autothrusters would simply invert the internet whining — Imperial players would complain about how broken and no-skill turrets are, and clamor for buffs to help low health ships that need to dodge arcs to survive (not that I think the OP's suggestion encompasses that). Balancing variance is a tricky subject... as many posters note, green dice are fickle and basing your whole list around rolling lots of evades will inevitably lead to failure, across a handful of games at a tournament. High variance lists are not consistent, and inconsistent lists are never successful in the metagame. This is also why Contracted Scouts with torpedoes are so effective — Plasma torpedoes have existed forever, but only with the advent of Scouts have we been able to consistently generate 4 hit results with two shots per ship. That consistency is what makes it good — the same reason Soontir is the premiere Interceptor Ace, as his ability to token stack makes his dice rolls consistently better. Making aces vulnerable to variance risks crippling the whole archetype, which isn't great since half of the Imperial fleet could be loosely defined as "aces". Palpatine is powerful in lists with few ships against lists that generate few attacks, and perhaps he is too powerful.

But instead of making aces overly susceptible to variance again (which would basically see them thrust from the meta), introducing some more autohit counters is a way to circumvent Palpatine/autothrusters and keep aces honest — this seems to be the approach that FFG is taking. Basically, I think that the way to solve the dominance of Palp Aces is by introducing tools into the meta which counter them instead of by nerfing its components. Palp Aces would gradually be pushed out of the center spotlight, remaining viable but also solvable, and thus creating room for new competitive archetypes to thrive. This would be good for Imperial players too, as it would allow them to look at their other "non-ace" options. This creates more opportunities for list-building, instead of nerfing the dominant archetype for one faction into the ground and failing to replace it with anything else. Otherwise, all you accomplish is making Imperial players whine about how their faction sucks... just like Rebels are now.

Of course, this isn't a one-size-fits-all approach. Contracted Scouts with torpedoes are just as harmful to the health of the game, but mostly because their stats, dial, upgrade slots, and cost are too **** good. An errata would be a better way to diminish the strength of this archetype, since buffing everything up to a point where it competes with torpedo Scouts would substantially raise the power curve of the whole game. And who knows; Palpatine and Autothrusters have been out for a year without overpowering the meta until recently. Nerfing Scouts might allow the "natural predators" of Palp Aces to reappear and prevent Imperials from dominating tournament results.

Block of text hits you for 9999 it's super effective!

That would be conditionalthrusters, not autothrusters.

Close the thread.

(Actually, while I don't think it's necessary, I do like the OP's ideas.)

Regarding Autothrusters:

AT was created to mitigate the mistake that was 3 Attack Die PWTs. Making AT less effective just buffs PWTs all over again.

Sorry, but we can't have that ever again.

Don't propose fixes to the Palp card that don't include it's complete and total elimination from 100 pt play. Otherwise you are just begging for a long, pointless argument from PGS.

But as to the original topic, i think that Autothrusters works well, and actually makes ships that were almost extinct in the meta viable again. We don't need turrets having their previous dominance... that would be the real outcome were this the case.

Stop complaining about Soontir and his PTL, autothrusters, stealth device combo. FFG already released a hard counter to him, and it's called black market slicer tools.

Use PTL on a high PS Ace and are within range 2? You get a 50% chance of taking an unblockable damage because you clear your stress last in the movement round. And now that the Rebels are getting ships with illicit slots, it's going to have a major impact on how people play a ship like Soontir. Because a 50% chance of losing 1/3rd of your health is going to be a serious concern.

Regarding Autothrusters:

AT was created to mitigate the mistake that was 3 Attack Die PWTs. Making AT less effective just buffs PWTs all over again.

Sorry, but we can't have that ever again.

I agree. But then also adding the range 3 option as well hurts non turret ships. They already get 4-5 dice plus whatever tokens they have.

Yea you heard the sad stories of rolling 5 blanks through a rock but that's so rare, and often the only chance the opposing player can land a shot.

Regarding Autothrusters:

AT was created to mitigate the mistake that was 3 Attack Die PWTs. Making AT less effective just buffs PWTs all over again.

Sorry, but we can't have that ever again.

I agree. But then also adding the range 3 option as well hurts non turret ships. They already get 4-5 dice plus whatever tokens they have.

Yea you heard the sad stories of rolling 5 blanks through a rock but that's so rare, and often the only chance the opposing player can land a shot.

One might say almost as rare as hitting one of the most agile ships in the galaxy at extreme long range.

really, the greatest counter to hyper mitigation is guaranteed damage. My dice related paranoia means I've had basically 0 issue with palp aces beyond the skill of the player flying them

problem is we also have torpscouts, that counter hyper mitigation with gobs of dice but then end up countering everything else much harder instead

I totally understand why Autothrusters was added to the game. It was a good addition, but it may have gone a bit too far.

I look at the original two factions in the game, Rebels and Imperials. The Rebel faction was basically designed as the faction that had higher hip points paired with lower agility. While the Imperial faction was designed with lower hip points and higher agility. The Rebel faction was the consistent faction, your ships would live through a pretty predictable number of shots taken at them. But, the Imperials used green dice as their defense. Some Tie Fighters would die to 1 shot, while other Ties would seemling live forever. You played Rebels if you wanted a consistent experience with your list, you wanted something predictable. You played Imperials if you felt that you wanted to gamble a little bit more. Imperials would win and lose games solely on what their green dice did at times. There were some exceptions that were created as the waves came (Lamda shuttle and the Awing), but those were the faction identities. The basic building blocks of those factions were in place.

Then Autothrusters and Palpatine were introduced. Neither were game breaking, but when used together they have seriously altered the underlying design of the Imperial faction. Before AT and Palp, Soontir was a very good ship, but it took courage to fly him. You had to be willing to tolerate that if your green dice were never once below average on a roll, you'd nearly always win the game, but if you rolled all blanks or had a roll that was far below average, you could die in 1 shot. It was risky, but it was still a very good ship. Fel dominated jousters, but was scared of turrets, there was a balance.

With Autothrusters and Palpatine Fel is really not scared of much. There are very few shots that he has to worry about. It used to be that a 3 att TL+F shot was a very big hammer. But, Fel doesn't really have to worry about that shot, he can sit at Range 2 with his tokens and Palpatine and really not worry he'll be hit. If he's at Range 3 with his tokens and Palpatine, it's actually impossible to hit him. It's impossible to hit a ship with a 3 attack TL+F shot.

Some ships survive on their total hp. The YV666 is a good example of this, it has 1 agi, but 12 hp. It will take a minimum of four 3attack TL+F shots to take it down. But, it will go down. A Tie fighter has 3 agi and 3 hp. It will probably take between 1-4 shots to take down. Sometimes it will die to the first shot, sometimes it will die to the 6th shot, but it will usually die to the 2nd shot. The Tie Fighter's survival all depends on it's dice variance. High agility ships should work that way. That's why generally speaking a Bandit is more durable than an Academy Pilot. The Academy trades away 1 total HP for an extra agility die when compared to the Bandit. The Bandit will die less fast, but it's expected window of survival is much narrower than the Tie Fighter. The Tie Fighter has a much wider window for survival.

Should any ship facing a 3attack TL+F shot at Range 3 be impossible to hit? When Fel rolls all blanks, shouldn't he be taking damage? It's already unlikely that Fel will roll all blanks to begin with, but it's certainly possible. Han Solo when paired with the Falcon Title and C3P0 could absolutely dodge 2 damage each round, it made any 2attack ship impossible to beat it. Han Solo with the Falcon Title, C3P0, and R2D2, could dodge 3 damage each round, assuming that he had no damage cards for R2D2 to flip up and create problems. Those were situations were not good for the game, but at least you were paying 60+ points for that ship, and the second and third shots it faced were going to hurt it. Fel does the same thing, but AT can work multiple times per round, and with 3-4 agi there is no guarantee that the second, third, or fourth shots will ever hit him. Isn't this a very similar problem that we've seen with Fat Falcons and their ability to mitigate damage, but worse?

I don't mean to just point the finger at Fel. He's just the easiest and starkest example of the problem, so he becomes the focal point of my argument. I still honestly wonder if the meta wouldn't be a better place if Fel, Inq, et al were still actually at the mercy of variance, even if only a little.

What if Autothrusters said you can reroll all your blank results all the time? More variance, but the potential to be better or worse.

if you think auto-thrusters are the problem, you gotta get rid of PWTs first

they kinda started it

Jousters NEVER countered turrets, that whole 3 pillar idea was flawed from the get go.

Part of the problem is that there were ships that were both turrets and high PS arc dodgers. It's kind of hard for rock to beat scissors when scissors can choose to be paper instead.

Jousters NEVER countered turrets, that whole 3 pillar idea was flawed from the get go.

Part of the problem is that there were ships that were both turrets and high PS arc dodgers. It's kind of hard for rock to beat scissors when scissors can choose to be paper instead.

Are we calling a Falcon with an engine upgrade an arc dodger? If not, I'm curious to know which ship/s you were talking about that were PWT arc dodgers pre-wave 6 when AT came out.